Bill Would Kill Ergonomics Funding

May 26, 2000 9:30 AM, EDT

Proposed government workplace standards affecting the reports, documentation and treatment of workplace injuries hit a roadblock on May 24, when the House Appropriations Committee stripped away all ergonomics funding in next year’s budget.

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Rep. Anne Northup (R-Ky.) introduced an amendment to the Labor, Health and Education programs spending plan for fiscal 2001. Her measure would prohibit any future money from going to “promulgate, issue, implement, administer, or enforce any proposed, temporary, or final standard on ergonomic protection.”

Northup was concerned about ambiguities in the proposed rules and how they would be implemented, said her press secretary, Christin Tinsworth, who added that the full House could strip away the amendment at a later date.

OSHA had collected 7,000 comments on the proposed standards, heard 1,000 witnesses in nine weeks of public testimony and spent years in researching workplace injuries that — by its own statistics — had been decreasing as of late.